The 2019 Met Gala Theme Has Been Revealed

10/10/2018

The 2018 “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination” Met Gala may have given us Rihanna dressed as a high fashion pope, but the theme for next year’s Met Gala is bound to deliver even more over-the-top fashion moments.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed its 2019 Costume Exhibition (and Met Gala) will be themed “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” No, not camp as in sleeping bags and tents, but camp as in exaggerated fashion. According to the New York Times, the exhibition is inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay that defines camp as “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”

Fittingly, the gala will be co-hosted by two campy fashion aficionados: Lady Gaga and Harry Styles. Even more fitting, the entire 2019 event is being sponsored by Gucci. Gucci’s Alessandro Michele along with tennis icon Serena Williams will also be joining the two pop stars as co-chairs of next year’s gala.

“We are going through an extreme camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalized cultures,” Andrew Bolton, Costume Institute curator, told the Times, “Whether it’s pop camp, queer camp, high camp or political camp — Trump is a very camp figure — I think it’s very timely.”

The 2019 Met Gala will take place on Monday, May 6, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.